Thursday, 3 September 2015

Army prepares for crucial trials as chief insists on indigenous Excalibur rifle

The DRDO carbine, which is likely to be trial evaluated by the army soon

By Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 3rd Sept 2015

On Tuesday, in a signal of army chief
General Dalbir Singh’s determination to arm his soldiers with a “Made in India”
rifle, his infantry chief visited an Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) facility near
Kolkata that is fabricating a batch of 200 Excalibur rifles. The army will
formally trial evaluate these later this year.

With Gen Dalbir Singh throwing his weight
behind the Excalibur, the army has begun informal trials on the prototype
rifles, to eliminate any chance of failing the formal trials when they are
held. So rigorous are the army’s trials that four of the world’s best rifles
--- Italian company Beretta’s ARX-160; the American Colt Combat Rifle; Israel
Weapon Industries ACE-1, and the Czech Republic’s CA-805 BREN --- failed to
pass a three-year-long evaluation.

On his visit to Rifle Factory, Ishapore
(RFI) on Tuesday, Lieutenant General Sanjay Kulkarni, the infantry director
general, put the prototype Excalibur through the “water” and “mud” tests, in
which the rifle is fired after being fully immersed in those substances. The
Excalibur handily passed these tests, which all four foreign rifles had failed
to clear.

Kulkarni is also learned to have suggested
certain ergonomic changes, which would make the Excalibur more comfortable for
jawans to carry and to fire.

The OFB has confirmed to Business Standard that the army has
pulled out all stops to institutionally oversee the project, something that the
navy has often done but is unprecedented for the army. A number of army
shooters are stationed at Ishapore where they carry out extensive test firing
daily.

If the Excalibur performs well in trials,
the OFB will mass-produce it to equip more than half the army’s 12 lakh
soldiers. With the Excalibur priced at about Rs 60,000 each, 6 lakh rifles
would cost about Rs 3,000 crore, half the cost of equipping the army with
foreign rifles.

The OFB says the Excalibur would not need a
new production line. It will be built on the INSAS production line that is
still active, building the older rifle for central armed police forces (CAPFs)
and paramilitary forces (PMFs).

However it is prestige, not economics,
which has made the army chief throw his weight behind the Excalibur. American
infantrymen carry the US-made M-16 rifle as their basic weapon; Russians carry
the Russian AK-74M; and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has indigenously
built its new QBZ-95 rifle. Now the Indian Army is gearing up to equip its
jawans with the Excalibur.

This will require the Excalibur to overcome
the negative legacy of its predecessor, the INSAS (an acronym for Indian Small
Arms System). The army has criticised the INSAS rifle, complaining that its
components fracture under difficult field conditions, its barrel gets deformed,
and its modern, see-through magazine (made of polycarbonate material)
frequently develops cracks.

Another complaint arose when the INSAS was
used in counter-militancy operations in Kashmir and the northeast. The army
complained that the lighter, 5.56 mm INSAS was not killing militants, as the
7.62 mm AK-47 rifle was with its heavier bullet. In fact, the army had itself
demanded a 5.56 mm INSAS rifle, in line with a NATO philosophy that wounding an
enemy soldier was better than killing him, since that tied down additional
soldiers in evacuating the casualty.

Furthermore, the Excalibur incorporates a
“direct gas-tapping angle”, which reduces its recoil, or the “jump” when it is
fired. The rifle has a foldable butt for easy carriage, and a modern “Picatinny
rail” on the barrel --- a standardized bracket for mounting telescopic sights,
night vision sights, laser aiming modules, bipods or bayonets.

Tushar Tripathi, the OFB’s Director,
Weapons, says the Excalibur fires in two settings: either single shot or
automatic, in which bullets stream out of the rifle for as long as the trigger
is pressed and there is ammunition in the magazine. This abandons the INSAS’
feature of a “three-round burst”, which complicated the design.

The OFB is also providing holographic and
laser sights with the Excalibur for firing at night. Bharat Electronics Ltd is
currently developing these.

Kulkarni followed up his Tuesday visit to
Ishapore with a visit on Wednesday to the Armament R&D Establishment (ARDE)
in Pune, the Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) laboratory that has developed
the Excalibur, as also the INSAS.

With the rifle tender already scrapped, the
army is also scuttling the procurement of a carbine. This tender, floated in
2010, asked for 44,618 close quarter battle (CQB) carbines, with another
1,20,000 being built by OFB. However, after three years of trials that
concluded in 2013, the army controversially ruled that only the Israeli carbine
met its requirements, leading to protests from the other vendors.

Now OFB has been asked to manufacture 100
carbines, to the design evolved by ARDE, for trials later this year.

Lets hope there are no glitches while producing and operating.India has yet to produce a weapon system which could make other nations jump and make a run for at any price ( Some weapons are produced with Russians,French etc.but nothing original).The previous rifles have failed miserably and even Nepal refused to operate them.

The P.Rail does not seem to hold a grenade launcher.At least the article does not mention that.

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I hope the general is made to use this rifle instead of the poor jawan stuck with Indian made sub optimal weapons. I have heard horror stories of jawabs and junior leaders arguing about who gets the ak and who is stuck with insas

Insas is a derivative of Ak47 and Galil. It's amazing how same product becomes "optimal" when made by Russians and it becomes "sub optimal" when it is "made in India". With people like you as our citizens, is it any wonder that India was under foreign occupation for more than 1000 years or one family been running this country like their fiefdom for almost 60 years?M16, Galil etc also faced glitches during their initial phases, but their respective armies didn't ditch them for "optimal" foreign assault rifles.I hope General Dalbir shows similar enthu for Arjun MKII.

"In fact, the army had itself demanded a 5.56 mm INSAS rifle, in line with a NATO philosophy that wounding an enemy soldier was better than killing him, since that tied down additional soldiers in evacuating the casualty."

A perfect example of how blindly copying a foreign philosophy will bring grief. Had the Indian Army bothered to learn from Indian history; it'd have easily concluded that a wounded and a dying soldier is far more dangerous than a soldier who is fit enough to pullback.

The terrorists changed the game on the Army following the suicide mission philosphy!

Hope this isn't one of those trials where the outcome is predefined, as is the case most of the time. The army chief is never gonna be on the frontline with this rifle.As an infantryman I'd like to have the best weapon possible. I don't care which country makes my rifle, I don't care about 'Make in India'....I just want a rifle I can depend on, not a better looking insas with a reflex sight.